Grand Prairie Friends is trying to raise money to buy 91 acres of forested property in Coles County, Illinois. It's adjacent to two other large parcels already owned by the same organization, making it useful for protecting species vulnerable to habitat fragmentation.

I was pleased to see some articles about diversity today. This one discusses skin-toned fashions such as hosiery and shoes being expanded to cover more shades of nude. This one presents a department store that's planning to offer gender-neutral clothing and organization, instead of men's/women's; alas, a temporary showing, but it's a step in the right direction.

We turn to words because there’s not much more to turn to. I love you becomes what I used to call the dark. I prayed this morning. It wasn’t much, just me and the god I understand. The earliest birds wake me now and I keep getting up into whatothers call false dawn. I know it sweeter. That’s the hard part, knowing darkness is there and singing anyway. Becoming more becomes less. It’s like an origami dove chased by a flying child, a kind of solitude so perfect you keep searching even as you know there is no cure. I think misery is mostly what we know. Yet there are days I overflow with love.My friends are so fragile I’m afraid to take their hands for fear I’ll break them. This morning I set out the early sprinkler and out of the darkness robins came and varied thrushes I thought our cats had killed.The water from our highest mountains turned and turned above our earthand all the birds went under that fallingwith everything they had.Maybe that’s the measure.Maybe in the morning light we pray and rain falls and we lift to its fallingas if we still had feathers, as if with wordswe could scrape the sky clean of every kind of pain.

Chad's doing a workshop and wants to get a diverse group of participants, but hand-coding free-form demographic responses would be suboptimal in light of the number of applications he expects. For a reasonably compact gender identification list, what would you suggest? Mine was cis female, trans female, cis male, trans male, genderqueer, agender, other, decline to state; corrections, improvements, rejections?

Up now at Strange Horizons: Foz Meadows, T.S. Miller, and I, moderated by Niall Harrison, discuss K.J. Parker's collection Academic Exerciseshere. I loved the book, despite its regrettable sexism, and am looking forward to reading more Parker. Other opinions were rather different.

Also, the magazine has put out a call for First Readers, i.e. those brave and hardy souls who tromp through the slush pile and pass things upwards to the editors. This is not a paying position, but you get to read some very interesting stuff. Details and how to apply here.

"I know, I know. Space marine. No! Hybrid space marine. WOLF hybrid space marine. WEREWOLF SPACE MARINE. But what is even cooler than a werewolf space marine? A werewolf space marine with wings--no! Even better, a werewolf space marine who *used* to have wings but doesn't have wings anymore because of TRAGIC BACKSTORY. A tragic backstory involving a man-bee hydrid, obviously. Bees. Bees are great. But not too tragic. Wait. No wings means no flying. How do we keep the flying, we need to keep the flying... I know: flying space boots. No! Even better! FLYING SPACE ROLLER SKATES. Way cooler than boots. Wingless werewolf space marine with flying roller skates. Perfect. Now we can get to work. What's next? Space princess? Yeah. Space princess."

- a priceless lesson in creative brainstorming by Andy and Lana Wachowski

Internet, you were right. Jupiter Ascending is every bit as ridiculously cracked as you said it would be.

I was charmed by this display of kissing skeletons. Regrettably I couldn't find the video on the Love Has No Labels website, but they have other cool stuff there. I am particularly pleased to see that the demonstration included a wide range of prejudices to be set up and knocked down. I'm also delighted that they highlighted different kinds of love, including at least two different pairs of best friends.

In Terramagne, people do this kind of thing a lot, adding "Love has no power differential" for the soup/nary couples.

I blame tassosss for this entirely, but yesterday after several hours of work I hit a brain-wall and decided to hibernate for the rest of the (rainy, rainy) day in my room, so at about 2:30 in the afternoon I queued up the first episode of The 100 to watch...

And I kind of just didn't stop? Hours later I was doing the whole, "Should I keep watching? Should I go to bed? I don't need sleep. I need more episodes."

YOU GUYS IT'S SO GREAT. It's all about terrible things happening to traumatized teenagers and everybody making awful decisions and hating themselves for it because there are literally no good choices for anybody to make about anything and also people get impaled with spears, like, all the time. There are at least 17 spear impalements per episode, by my estimate.

Okay, seriously, the things I am really enjoying about this show, halfway through the first season, are: 1) the characters and all the unhappy complicated relationships between them and all the people trying so hard to be so much tougher and crueler than they want to be because they don't think they have a choice; 2) the fact that shit is always happening so it's very exciting; and 3) its commitment to exploring the awful and wonderful but mostly awful things people will do in impossible survival situations.

Realistic assessment, I may not get through a full work day today. Last night I suddenly stopped being able to put weight on my right leg and any movement in my hips was painful. I got to the bathroom on 2 canes. I can put more weight on it this morning and have taken some tramadol. It is hard to bend over and also to turn over in bed, sit upright, etc. Very painful and sharp. Pain/tingling going down my leg into my foot. The "good" side is also aching but not super sharp pain.

I made my tea, ate some crackers, bent over to put cat food in the bowl (mistake)

Could not find my (spare) glasses and had to painfully tidy things up till I found them. They were in the bed in the first place I looked of course. I need to get new real glasses.

I will be very cautious today and will get d. to bring my walker up out of the garage.

Not going to despair. Laying low.

Wrote to my doctor to say what is happening. I will need some vicodin and I think a day or two of lying still. I am not sure whether to skip PT on Wednesday or try to do it. Right now I would not be able to get there anyway. But maybe by Wed. can do it with a ride (which I have already lined up)

Calling the pain clinic now to make sure my next sacroiliac injection is scheduled.

About to get my period so "not despairing" may also not completely be realistic as I usually have about half a day of PMS existential crisis/mood where I doubt everything and cry.

Maybe I overdid itwhen I called my father an enemy of humanity.That might have been a little strongly put,a slight exaggeration,

an immoderate description of the personwho at the moment, two thousand miles away,holding the telephone receiver six inches from his ear,must have regretted paying for my therapy.

What I meant was that my fatherwas an enemy of my humanityand what I meant behind thatwas that my father was splitinto two people, one of them

living deep inside of melike a bad king or an incurable disease—blighting my crops,striking down my herds,poisoning my wells—the otherstanding in another time zone,in a kitchen in Wyomingwith bad knees and white hair spouting from his ears.

I don’t want to scream forever,I don’t want to live without proportionLike some kind of infection from the past,

so I have to remember the second father,the one whose TV dinner is getting coldwhile he holds the phone in his left handand stares blankly out the window

where just now the sun is going downand the last fingertips of sunlightare withdrawing from the hillsthey once touched like a child.

1. Write six days per week (total, not average) except while traveling. Well, I got the "not writing while traveling part" down.

2. Participate in both Dragon Age and Final Fantasy Kiss Battles. Write at least two fics for each. I only wrote one story for the DA battle, two for DOINK! I'll crosspost them both tomorrow. I am a bit discouraged that neither kiss battle really seemed to take off this year. Some participation in each, but not that much, and not very many different people. I'd say that's a different post, but my dissatisfaction with those events spilled over into my lack of motivation to write this month in general.

3. Wrap up the giveaway fic that's almost finished. Success!

4. Finish first draft of DA Big Bang fic. I made some progress. I forget when I was writing these goals that "check in" isn't the same as "draft due"; I have another month for that. So, it's not finished, but it's coming along, although I've shifted direction about half a dozen times.

This is my card for the Pi(e) Fest. It's all about the food and the funny number that begins 3.14...

I'm hoping to attract some new readers through this fest. People are starting to show interest in specific prompts. If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl. Any other ideas for monetizing this? Let me know. See all my 2015 bingo cards.